GEOLOGICAL IfOTES IN THE GEEAT EXHIBITION. 
891 
earliest stratified azoic rocks. The Laurentian and Huronian rocks of 
Canada are indeed the grand title-page and preface to the ponderous and 
intensely interesting volume of paleontological geology. 
ZoLLVEEEiN (Prussia). — Into the court of whatever country Ave go we 
are certain to find most instructive material. Unfortunately it wants, 
however, the previous knowledge of the geologist or mineralogist to he 
able to read the lesson to be learnt. It is not fanciful geology we must 
expect to find, although the Exhibition is not without some most interesting 
and instructive collections of fossils, and of plants and trees, and wood, 
birds, beasts and fishes, which go far towards unriddling many an organic 
fragment of the past, and many an artificial compound that goes to show 
how their rock-tombs were built up. But it is hard, honest, practical 
geology that the Exhibition teaches ; it shows geology in its useful phases 
amongst the economic sciences of mankind. It is not according to their 
age or their organic contents that we find the specimens arranged, but 
according to their commercial value and importance. 
First, then, in the categories of all nations comes coal, then the metal?, 
then other substances, and so on from the most important to the most rare 
or least useful. In the Zollverein court there is an extensive suite of 
specimens illustrating its chief coal-fields, namely ; those of the Hohe 
Veen, the Westphalian mountains, the Hundsriick, the Black Forest 
(Schwarzwald), the Teutobiirgerwald, and the Wiehegebirge, the Thii- 
ringerwald, the Hartz mountains, the Eiver Saale district, Erzgebirge in 
the kingdom of Saxony, Eiesengebirge, and Upper Silesia. Descriptions 
and comparisons of these with our English beds would be highly instruc- 
tive, did space permit ; but it will be more interesting to pass on to those 
other coal-beds occurring in other formations, of which we either have no 
traces or only but little developed representatives. Proceeding upward 
from the carboniferous formation we find coal-seams (Lettenkohle) existing 
in the lower beds of the Keuper or new red marl on the eastern side of the 
Black Forest, between the Schwarzwald and Odenwald. In Wiirtemberg 
also these seams appear near Oedendorf and Entendorf, where they arc 
used for the alum-works, and near Mittelbronn, where they are obtained 
for general burning purposes. Coal-seams likewise appear at other 
points in the lower part of the Keuper formation as well as in tlie upper, 
but not in a workable condition. The only places where available seams 
have been discovered in the Oolite formation are to the north of the Hartz 
Mountains, in the Prussian district of Wansleben and jS^euhaldensleben ; 
near Gnaslebeu and Briinnen, in the Duchy of Brunswick ; and near 
Welfensleben, where the iron-pyrites which accompany the coal are used 
at the vitriol- works. The Wealdcn strata only appear on the north- 
western ridges of the Hercynian hills. 
On the western edge of the Teutobiirgerwald, in the district of Tecklen- 
burg, Westphalia, a small seam of coal is seen in them on the road from 
Miinster to Ibbenbiiren, and two seams are met with near Tecklcnburg, 
for a distance of 2 miles ; the thicker one is 9 inches. In the district of 
Osnabriick, in Hanover, there are 4 seams, containing 8 to 10 feet of coal : 
three of the seams offer good caking coal, the fourth is impure. Their 
south-western continuation is found in the Prussian department of Minden, 
where 4 seams, equal altogether to 6 feet of coal, have been worked for a 
long time. On the northern side of the Wiehegebirge, and near the river 
Weser, there are seams of far greater importance and extent. In the 
department of Minden 2 or 3 seams are known, the lowest of which is 10 
to 18 inches thick, and workable ; affording caking coal in the eastern part, 
whilst the western is anthracitic. The seam has been worn on the right 
